Three years ago during my citizenship process I wrote twice to the commune of Palermo requesting a birth certificate and a negativo/positivo letter and both times it took less than a month to receive the docs. Last year I visited the vital records office in Palermo with my cousin and filled the paperwork to request the birth certificate of my cousin's grandfather and 30 minutes later we walked out the office with the record on hand. Yes, Palermo rocks!

mler wrote:DRuss, your family comes from a lovely part of Italy. I tend to think that the smaller comuni are more efficient, but sometimes even the large ones surprise. It's always been easy for me to deal with Napoli. Who would have thunk it!

I find all of Italy quite lovely, but I do agree about my grandmother's small town in Pisa. Friends are often impressed when I show them some photos.

I think the question of efficiency depends not only on the size of the comune, but also how many emigrants there were during the past 150 years, as they may place a strain on the anagrafe (looking up historical certificates, registration of foreign births, marriages, deaths, etc.). Even the lady I dealt with at the Consulate was worried about the extra work that my family could cause her, after seeing that my grandmother had seven children.

Certain towns also suffer from a lack of funding. For example, some of the smaller towns in Umbria that I've visited don't have much of a tax base. They aren't frequented by tourists and didn't see much revenue from property taxes or road tax, owing to their sparse populations.

From my personal experience winning suit against Italy for recognition of my citizenship and reading accounts of pre-48ers online, it seems that going the legal route does in fact entail certain advantages over common jus sanguinis applicants at the consulates.

For example, often times consulates give people a lot of trouble with their vital records (spelling disparities, etc.) causing sometimes years to resolve to their (the consular officials') satisfaction. But for post-48ers going to the Tribunal of Rome, such minor discrepancies are not at issue, [unless I suppose you have totally different surnames on the records or something egregious]; as Avv Paiano explained it, the judges simply want to verify your line of descent from the Italian citizen ancestor, an american surname instead of the italian one or a slightly different spelling are not things they are going to find dispute.

Second, my experience with Paiano is such that when it came time to file my b/c with the comune, Luigi's office was in direct personal contact with the officials in Sicily and when a slight error was made he immediately contacted the comune and within 24 hours the mistake was fixed and fresh certificates issued at no cost. [I know it's not something amazingly great, but, nice nonetheless]

Obviously pursuing a lawsuit should only be done if a pre-48 line is not available [and the cost is certainly more], but, people should be aware that all in all, the amount of time needed may not be any different than applying through a consulate (and in some cases significantly less) and, at least when using Luigi Paiano, one can avoid a lot of bureaucratic nastiness that many experience going through consulates.

At the end of the day, once your Italian atto di nascita is issued it doesn't matter how you came to get it -- at least not to the government or anyone whose opinion matters.

I was reading a lot about the 1948 court decision, I could take lot of information from this forum, but I still have some questions addressed especially to the people who already finished their process.

-Once the decision is done, how much it would cost to pay the taxes and register the decision in the commune in order to have the final paper?, please details needed if possible.

-Is the tax paid after the decision is different than the tax paid to start the court process?

-What is the maximum time to wait between final hearing and court decision?

-What is the maximum time to wait between court decision and having the passport in hand?

This concise historical presentation is intended not as an exhaustive sociological treatise, but as a general introduction for the layman. It is presumed that the reader has already reviewed Italian Heraldry, Nobility & Genealogy. Because of the highly individual nature of genealogical and heral...

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